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For 5,163 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 59% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 38% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 69
Highest review score: 100 The Only Living Pickpocket in New York
Lowest review score: 0 Pixels
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,565 out of 5163
  2. Mixed: 1,332 out of 5163
  3. Negative: 266 out of 5163
5163 movie reviews
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  1. Not Fade Away
    It's a period piece composed of familiar pieces, none of which have much to say beyond surface elements that have been explored countless times before. Using a typical coming-of-age mold, Chase turns cultural ephemera into formula.
  2. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
    If you're willing to just go with it, An Unexpected Journey is a competent ride, but as a whole it lacks purpose, giving the impression of a television program in its later seasons still chugging along while full aware that it has peaked. Needless to say, "Hobbit" fans will find plenty to soak in; others may get the feeling of being bludgeoned by deja vu.
  3. This Is 40
    Welcome to the world of white people problems, ground zero for the strain of American comedies that Apatow does best. But does he really?
  4. King Kelly
    It's an unflinching update to media scholar Neil Postman's prophetic claim about the deadly impact of television on cultural identity: Smartphones in hand, we face the danger of filming ourselves to death.
  5. Killing Them Softly
    The movie isn't political so much as philosophical, trashing the notion of the American dream as anything more than fodder for an endless rat race.
  6. The Collection
    The whole thing is a fairly yawn-a-rific affair until the vengeful prologue establishes a wicked role reversal, hinting at the better movie that filmmakers more interested in storytelling would have made.
  7. California Solo
    Even as California Solo plays like a track we've heard before, it's still worth a listen.
  8. Deadfall
    A bonafide family drama, proof that the noir has humanistic roots. It left me feeling thankful for persistent movie traditions.
  9. Beware of Mr. Baker
    Beware of Mister Baker won the Grand Jury Prize at the SXSW Film Festival earlier this year, perhaps because it was the best embodiment of a recent trend in the non-fiction realm.
  10. Zero Dark Thirty
    Bigelow delivers an acute realization of the mission's execution that's eerily in sync with the way it played in the popular imagination. Visually, the events unfold as a mashup of shadowy movements with flashes of green night vision. It's simultaneously predictable and tense.
  11. Rust and Bone
    While its main characters are tough-minded, Rust and Bone is itself pure heart.
  12. The Central Park Five
    With an editing approach that seamlessly blends past and present, Central Park Five contains a fluid, engaging storytelling that does away with the dry voiceover commentary and theatrical music choices that typically account for the narrative flow of most Burns films.
  13. Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God
    Gibney's narrative drags to some extent when the focus widens to explore the Vatican's overall policy for covering up sex scandals, but he successfully demonstrates the systematic failure of a system designed work flawlessly on the basis of spirituality that never existed in the first place.
  14. First Winter
    Dickinson's hauntingly naturalistic look at disgruntled young adults trapped in the country following an urban disaster plays like "Martha Marcy May Marlene" transported to a post-apocalyptic survival narrative -- with lots of yoga and sex.
  15. Anna Karenina
    Wright's extraordinary long takes draw you into the universe of Anna Karenina with a seamless approach that a straightforward literary adaptation could never accomplish.
  16. Hitchcock
    Hitchcock largely succeeds at pulling back the veil on his off-camera personality. To a larger degree, it reveals the level of influence of his devoted wife and screenwriter Alma (Helen Mirren) on both his personal life and career.
  17. Lincoln
    At two and a half hours, Lincoln contains only a single battle scene in its opening seconds. The rest is pure talk, a keen dramatization of Doris Kearns Goodwin's tome "Team of Rivals," that delivers an overview of Lincoln's crowning achievement in chunks of strategy talk.
  18. In Another Country
    In Another Country is a paragon of any given Hong movie's intrinsic charms, and yet it also manages to break from the pattern by including an English-speaking character as one of its leads.
  19. Café de Flore
    Cafe de Flore constantly hovers on the brink on some revelation it never quite arrives at.
  20. Starlet
    The story retains an inscrutable tone that sometimes makes its emotional qualities feel remote, but it still delivers a powerful message about the challenge of self-diagnosis by rooting it in universal experience
  21. Vamps
    A surprisingly enjoyable tongue-in-cheek New York comedy from "Clueless" director Amy Heckerling, Vamps teeters on the brink of not quite working and yet still routinely lands its laughs.
  22. This Must Be the Place
    Guided by an over-the-top Nazi hunter played by Judd Hirsch (clearly enjoying himself), Cheyenne begins a road trip through Middle American that goes nowhere, and Penn's mopey has-been routine starts to feel like a bad joke that just keeps getting worse.
  23. Jack and Diane
    The mystical allure of this long-awaited "lesbian werewolf movie" turns out to have more value than the real thing.
  24. The Bay
    The Bay manages to scare up a real fear of environmental neglect. It's quite possibly the first example of jump scares used in service of activism.
  25. A Late Quartet
    Leave it to Walken to upstage Beethoven.
  26. The Details
    It's a familiar mold: the perils of suburban discontent have been so thoroughly explored that The Details plays like a hodgepodge of familiar circumstances on an assembly line to disaster.
  27. Wreck-It Ralph
    Beneath the pixelated gags, the stakes are relatively familiar. However, much of the humor in Wreck-It Ralph riffs on the nostalgia associated with real games.
  28. The Zen of Bennett
    Recording "Body and Soul" with Bennet only a short period before her death, Winehouse's simultaneously effusive presence not only illustrates her fragility but stands in sharp contrast to the stable work ethic that Bennett has cultivated over the course of his 60-year career.
  29. The Loneliest Planet
    Suspense is rarely delivered with such distinctive patience.
  30. The American Scream
    Think "Death of a Salesman" with demons.
  31. The Sessions
    Baring all and radiating an affability that defines the movie's tone, Hunt delivers her finest performance since "As Good As It Gets."
  32. Holy Motors
    There's no doubting that Holy Motors is an ungodly mess of images and moments, some more alluring than others, but it sure leaves a mark.
  33. Flight
    Slickly paced and carried by mature performances, Flight embodies one of the finer strains of Hollywood filmmaking in recent years.
  34. Smashed
    Winstead's performance provides a trenchant wakeup call even when the movie can't keep pace.
  35. V/H/S
    Most segments have a fair share of cheap scares, but they also delve into the art of the build-up, as if delivering a series of grim jokes with bloody punchlines. Consider it a 21st-century take on "Tales from the Crypt."
  36. Sister
    Sister may not arrive at a happy ending, but the lack of resolution -- capped off by the powerful last image --completes its journey to a place of rousing emotional clarity.
  37. The Paperboy
    Lee Daniels' The Paperboy is a rare case of serious commitment to outright silliness.
  38. The House I Live In
    A personal work not because the director chooses to make himself a part of the story, but rather because he implicates all of us in it.
  39. Life of Pi
    In its finer moments, however, Lee translates the book's wondrous prose into grand visual conceits meant for the big screen. Posited as a story that "will make you believe in god," instead it has the power to confirm one's faith in the cinematic experience.
  40. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning
    Hyams delivers a remarkably satisfying action-thriller hybrid that constantly pushes ahead. It's one of the best action movies of the year simply because it keeps hitting the right beats.
  41. Frankenweenie
    Burton's id explodes onto the screen with a plethora of demonic mutated critters.
  42. Sinister
    The movie makes up for uneven dialogue and pacing issues through sheer horrific imagery.
  43. Dredd
    Fitfully uneven, Dredd is nevertheless an intriguing consolidation of action-movie excess -- and even makes a solid case for its aesthetic appreciation.
  44. Silver Linings Playbook
    Incredibly heartfelt to a large degree because of its cast.
  45. End of Watch
    By virtue of its style and high stakes scenario, End of Watch is impressively tense, but then so are most episodes of "COPS," which don't suffer from the forced melodrama found here.
  46. The Impossible
    It suffers from the greater problem of emphasizing a feel-good plot within the context of mass destruction.
  47. Francine
    While Francine distinguishes itself with atmospheric strangeness, Cassidy and Shatzky never create a satisfying whole.
  48. Argo
    Equally a slick political thriller, intelligent period piece and sly Hollywood satire, Ben Affleck's Argo maintains a careful balance between commentary and entertainment value.
  49. Cloud Atlas
    Tom Hanks' appearances come across like scene changes between unfunny sketches on 'Saturday Night Live.'
  50. Seven Psychopaths
    A less controlled and slapdash character piece than "In Bruge," McDonagh's new movie benefits greatly from a plethora of one-liners that toy with crime movie clichés in the unlikely context of writerly obsessions.
  51. Looper
    There's a adrenaline rush even in the problematic finish, an eagerness that drives the filmmaking so that Looper is thrilling to watch even when it falls apart.
  52. Detropia
    The whole experience is one long rant in radiant colors.
  53. Keep the Lights On
    Sachs skillfully explores dangerous extremes -- not only drug addiction, but the slipperiness of attraction.
  54. For Ellen
    Nobody else could fit the role of a crestfallen rocker that Paul Dano embodies in director So Yong Kim's remarkable For Ellen.
  55. Ornette: Made in America (1985)
    Ornette isn't just a love letter to the liberty of jazz rhythms; it excels at expressing them.
  56. The Ambassador
    The closest Brügger comes to explaining his style is an early statement on the duality of his mission to go "beyond all moral boundaries known to man while still being a respectable member of society." It's a goal enacted less with a coy wink than with a violent elbow jab to the ribs.
  57. Lawless
    Unfortunately, Lawless lacks the same darkly energizing spirit that made "The Proposition" such a revelation: It has plenty of gunplay, scowling showdowns and dust-caked setpieces, but little in the way of dynamic filmmaking to imbue those elements with life.
  58. Teddy Bear
    A gigantic physique hides the fragile man beneath and Matthiesen ably follows the journey of that persona as it tunnels through mounds of muscle to reach the surface. In essence, the lion finds his courage.
  59. Side by Side
    Produced by Keanu Reeves, this talking heads survey of the transition from shooting on film to digital video is against all odds an imminently watchable overview, and not only because Reeves has decent interview skills.
  60. Cosmopolis
    Since 2005's "A History of Violence," Cronenberg has ventured beyond the grotesque allegorical interests of his earlier movies, a shift that has led some longtime fans to assume he has softened up. As an enjoyably peculiar anti-capitalist indictment, Cosmopolis proves otherwise.
  61. Compliance
    It's a movie that must be seen, processed and discussed, perhaps the first of its kind to transform the audience into a focus group.
  62. Chicken with Plums
    While visually scrumptious, the movie struggles to reach a greater profundity that it never quite obtains, but its childlike emulation of a grand tragedy is indelibly precious.
  63. Beloved
    Beloved never really earns its sprawling timeline, eventually getting bogged down with too many developments and overstaying its welcome. For a movie where people intermittently burst into song, the plot is oddly one-note.
  64. The Awakening
    As ghost stories go, this one's done just well enough to provide reminders of how it has been done better.
  65. Robot and Frank
    Robot and Frank succeeds where "Ted" fails because, unlike McFarlane, Schreier and Ford render the relationship between the human character and the robot in largely credible terms.
  66. Sleepwalk with Me
    Sleepwalk With Me calls to mind Judd Apatow's "Funny People" for its focus on the eccentric, obsessive nature of the wannabe comic's mind.
  67. Red Hook Summer
    It's painful to watch Red Hook Summer stumble, because the man behind it has tried so hard to get his groove back. However, it's energizing in the fleeting moments when he does just that.
  68. 2 Days in New York
    Even when it stumbles, however, 2 Days in New York retains an airy vibe, reflecting its dogged intention to charm its viewers. But seeing as "2 Days in Paris" never felt especially irksome, this affable sequel deserves the same insouciant shrug.
  69. ParaNorman
    Unlike the polished universe of Pixar's "Brave" or countless other recent CGI efforts, ParaNorman maintains a delicate, handcrafted look that underscores its ideas.
  70. Sushi: The Global Catch
    Any bona fide sushi fan stands to benefit from the general wake up call that "The Global Catch" provides in ample doses.
  71. Dreams of a Life
    Dreams of a Life unintentionally amounts to a mean-spirited snooze.
  72. Celeste and Jesse Forever
    The whole thing is a step above studio romantic comedies, but that's not saying much.
  73. Searching for Sugar Man
    For a quarter of a century -- unbeknownst to most Americans, including Rodriguez's original producers -- the singer landed a massive following in the country where his humanitarian outlook provided an escape for many disgruntled youth struggling under apartheid, elevating him to the stature of a "South African Elvis."
  74. Killer Joe
    With an eye for gritty, shameless fun, Friedkin unleashes the play's guilty pleasure center. Friedkin holds nothing back, but it's Letts' rambunctious plotting that enables the director to chart a path to the wild climax.
  75. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
    Recently released from jail, Ai's full story remains to be told, but Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry competently summarizes his lasting relevance, regardless of what may happen next.
  76. Klown
    For American audiences, each gag has added appeal because it contains an uneasy humor that's often explored but never fully exploited in these parts.
  77. Ruby Sparks
    Kazan has fun with a silly premise and smartly plays it straight when the occasion calls for it, while keeping the cutesy, fantastical extremes of the material at bay. It's less fairy tale than shrewd exaggeration on the pratfalls of desire.
  78. The Queen of Versailles
    Slickly made if not particularly stylish, the movie maintains its entertainment value for picking ideal models of American excess.
  79. Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai
    With its lethargic pace, Hara Kiri may disappoint more often than it delights, but the payoff is extreme in more ways than one.
  80. Shut Up and Play the Hits
    If you've never heard of LCD Soundsystem or cared much for the group's work, Shut Up and Play the Hits still manages to explore the prospects of fame and contemporary rock music's lasting relevance.
  81. The Dark Knight Rises
    A spectacular noir epic that's equal parts murky, bloated, flashy and triumphantly cinematic. Four years after Nolan's "Batman Begins" sequel "The Dark Knight" rattled audiences with a similar audiovisual overload, the new movie falls into the same rhythm and remains viscerally satisfying even when the story falters.
  82. Easy Money
    While overlong and occasionally too reliant on a formulaic set of motives to drive the action forward, Easy Money retains its suave composure right through the engrossing finale.
  83. Savages
    Stone's uneven direction veers from near-amateurish genre antics to an enjoyable awareness of those same standards.
  84. Magic Mike
    Magic Mike casts a seriously entertaining spell.
  85. Beasts of the Southern Wild
    If nothing else, this memorable effort eloquently displays Hushpuppy's fragile understanding of her world, where the only certainty is that nothing lasts forever. That makes "Beasts" into a gigantic triumph even when it falls apart.
  86. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
    It pitches a tone between comedy and tragedy that holds unique appeal.
  87. To Rome with Love
    Even Allen himself, appearing in front of the camera for his first role since 2005's "Scoop," looks a little lost in the mess.
  88. Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present
    The filmmaker's first-rate access feels like a kind of desecration.
  89. Extraterrestrial
    Extraterrestrial can be forgiven the tangents into melodrama due to Vigalondo's seamless ability to navigate those soapy waters.
  90. Your Sister's Sister
    Duplass' feisty energy is matched by DeWitt's constant smarminess, while Blunt's shy, fragile behavior balances off the forceful personalities surrounding her.
  91. Prometheus
    Prometheus is an unquestionable good time, one of the best big-screen science fiction accomplishments since 'Avatar.'
  92. Bel Ami
    Pattinson portrays the monotonous Georges Duroy in two equally dry modes: scowls and smirks.
  93. Lola Versus
    Gerwig singlehanded carries this blithe, generally forgettable story.
  94. Sexual Chronicles of a French Family
    A barrage of screwing with interludes does not yield a cohesive movie. Watching Sexual Chronicles of a French Family, the one-note idea grows increasingly evident, as does its absence of fresh ideas.
  95. Moonrise Kingdom
    Even when that story drags, Moonrise Kingdom could be appreciated on mute.
  96. The Dictator
    Transitioning back into a scripted dynamic after his quasi-documentary performance excursions with "Bruno" and "Borat," Baron Cohen loses none of his edge, combining slapstick inspiration and social commentary into a hilariously provocative blend.
  97. Sleepless Night
    Despite the ongoing momentum, Sleepless Night never loses touch with its story.
  98. I Wish
    I Wish embraces blissful ignorance, even celebrating its child characters' naivete.
  99. The Day He Arrives
    Maintains a funny and sad focus on its single petulant subject.
  100. Oki's Movie
    Viewed as a single experience, Oki's Movie is a curious oddity worthy of multiple viewings and lengthy contemplation, but its tricky formalism makes it less overtly satisfying on an emotional level.
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